


Hopeless Tangle

by mousapelli



Category: Free!
Genre: Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Red String of Fate, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 20:19:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17250743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mousapelli/pseuds/mousapelli
Summary: As long as Haru has been able to see it, his red string has lead out and away. He wishes he could knot it to Rin, because he'd rather have Rin than anyone, anywhere.





	Hopeless Tangle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wickedcherub](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickedcherub/gifts).



> Written for 2018 SportsFest, Bonus Round 3. Prompt was "last person to find their soulmate."
> 
> These two are a mess and all I want to write about as season 3 destroys me with its goodness.

"What?" Haru asked. He was staring down at his hands, the red string looped idly around his fingers like usual whenever he sat for longer than a minute, spilling off them in a messy tangle and trailing away behind him, back the way he'd come from the station to pick Rin up.

"If you just wound it up, it wouldn't be all a mess like that," Rin repeated, still shoveling bites of his combini bento in his mouth. Haru's was half-eaten, but he'd picked out most of the parts that he liked.

"Yours is a mess, too," Haru pointed out, literally pointed. Rin's thread was tied a bunch of times around his wrist, as if he was worried it was going to fall off or something, but then trailed out the door just the same as Haru's. "Yours is always like that." It was from how often Rin went away and how far, Haru guessed, that it never quite drew back together neatly before he was gone again.

Rin made an exasperated noise, "That's because…look, forget it. Will you eat the rest of that? You're going to die of malnutrition, Haru, and then I'll be stuck with Makoto wailing over your desiccated corpse."

Haru gave Rin a dirty look, but picked up his tray and ate another half a dozen bites of it.

The truth was that Haru didn't want to untangle his thread, didn't care where it went to. Rin was visiting, for a whole week, staying in Haru's apartment and sharing meals and giving Makoto someone else to fuss over and swimming in the next lane. Haru wished he could take their stupid strings and cut them off and tie them on each other's wrists so that he could keep Rin with him always.

He'd felt that way always, ever since they were children, before he could even see his stupid string. Even when it appeared, in middle school, it didn't change how much he missed Rin. When Rin had kissed him the first time, it had only made that ache worse, until Haru finally had to put the whole thing out of his mind and just enjoy the time he had with Rin, no matter who was going to take them away from each other eventually. It was completely normal, everyone said, to date or sleep with or even really love other people before you came to the end of your red thread. Haru didn't care if it was normal, he didn't want that anyway. He just wanted Rin. And maybe if he tied his stupid, traitor thread in enough knots, tight enough, it would shrivel up and fall off like an umbilical cord and leave him alone.

"You're frowning about nothing again," Rin said, drawing Haru back to reality. He sat his empty bento tray down and crawled over to kneel in front of Haru, framing his face with his hands. His hands were so big and warm, and Haru sighed as Rin leaned in to kiss him. "This ok?"

"Yeah." Haru wrapped arms around Rin's back to hug him closer, pressing his face against Rin's neck to draw in the smell of Rin's aftershave, his laundry detergent, just Rin. "I missed you. I feel weird when you're back."

He didn't ask Rin to stay and Rin didn't promise that he would. Rin kissed him, sweet and then fierce, pulled Haru into his futon and stripped off all their clothes, then made him forget everything for a while, which was honestly one of Haru's favorite things about him. When Rin was away, Haru spent all his time being pulled both directions back towards the past and forward towards the future. When Rin was warm under his hands Haru could just exist, which was honestly all he ever wanted to do, just to be.

Later, when they were tired out but probably not so tired they wouldn't go again before they actually slept, Rin was sitting up with his back against the wall and Haru's head in his lap, patiently undoing the snarled mess of Haru's thread.

"Don't," Haru said, but there wasn't any force to it. Rin shushed him and kept on doing it. He tugged gently at the tangles until they started to loosen up, and when his persistence freed any length, Rin looped it around his hand to keep it from getting tangled up again. It didn't feel like anything for Rin to touch it, but Haru liked the way it looked there, the bright red against Rin's tanned skin. He reached up to slide fingers between the loops around Rin's wrist and his skin, and Rin's lips curled in a small smile without him interrupting what he was doing.

Haru watched Rin's face instead of his hands or his string, and so he was mildly surprised when Rin finally murmured, "There, finally. It's shortening up, too." Haru looked down, almost against his will, then frowned to see his thread wound entirely, the hank of it soft in Rin's hands, not going anywhere.

"How did you…what?" Haru sat up, looking around, but no, it was all in Rin's hands. Rin was staring at him but Haru couldn't understand what was happening at all, just that all of his string was wound up, and the only thing coming out of it was Rin's, that had gotten stuck in it somehow and…oh. Oh. "That's your string. It's stuck to my string."

"No shit," Rin snorted, but Haru just stared at him until Rin frowned too. "Wait. You can't have not known that. Did you not know that?"

"How was I supposed to know that?" Haru demanded. "It's always going out, away, all tangled on stuff and…away…"

Rin's face contorted like he was going to yell, but then it turned into snickering laughter. Rin dragged a hand through his hair and let his cheek rest against his forearm. "You did all this with me, and you didn't even think I was your soulmate? Damn, you're a lot. I followed mine to you the whole way from Sano, you know. I sat in class right next to you for a whole school year, strung so tight across our desks it didn't touch the floor."

"I couldn't see it yet," Haru murmured. Something deep and amazing and terrible was rolling in his chest, but he couldn't process it yet, numb to the size of it. "Not until middle school. It's always led away, because you keep going so far away it never catches up before you leave again."

"The first year I was in Australia, you pulled on it so hard I thought it was going to come off." Rin and Haru both looked down at the knotted loops around Rin's wrist. "I tied them on, just in case. Isn't that silly?" Rin's voice cracked.

"Don't cry!" Haru protested, because he hated when Rin did that. He crawled into Rin's lap and wrapped arms around his neck, because he never knew what else to do. "I'm sorry, don't cry."

"I'm fine," Rin told him, even though his cheek was wet where it rubbed against Haru's. "All of this, and you still thought there was somebody else on the end of that thing?"

"That isn't what I wanted," Haru insisted, clinging tighter. "Just this. Just you."

Rin pushed Haru back, despite Haru's grunt of annoyance, and threaded his fingers through Haru's. With his free hand, he flipped the soft loops of their string still hanging from his hand over onto Haru's wrist. It looked shorter, some of the circles finally fusing together, although it seemed like it had a long way to go. A week probably wouldn't do it. Then it would start all over, stretching out.

"There, you've got me," Rin said. "So now what?"


End file.
